If the morning had brought surprises to Miss Lucilla van Tromp, it had
not denied them to the Marquis de Bienville. They were all the more
astonishing in that they came out of a sky that was relatively clear. As
he stood in his dressing-gown, with a cigarette between his fingers, at
one of the upper windows of his tall, towerlike hotel, he would have
said that his life at the moment resembled the blue dome above him, from
which, after a cloudy dawn and dull early morning, the last fleecy
drifts were being blown away.
There were many circumstances that combined just now to make him glad of
being Raoul de Laval, Marquis de Bienville. The mere material comfort of
modern hotel luxury had a certain joyous novelty after nearly two years
spent amid the unprofitable splendors of the tropical forest. True, New
York was not Paris; but it was an excellent distributing centre for
Parisian commodities and news, and would do very well for the work he
had immediately in hand. So far, all promised hopefully. His valet had
joined him from France, with whatever he could wish in the way of
wardrobe; and Mrs. Bayford's reply to his note contained much
information beyond what was actually written down in words. Moreover,
the statement he had found awaiting him from the Crédit Lyonnais
revealed the fact that, owing to the two years in which he had little or
no need to spend money, he could now live with handsome extravagance
until after he married Miss Grimston. He might even pay the more
pressing of his debts, though that possibility presented itself in the
light of a work of supererogation, seeing that in so short a time he
should be able to pay them all.
Then would begin a new era in his life. On that point he was quite
determined. At thirty-two years of age it was high time to think of
being something better in the world than a mere man-beauty. His
experience with Persigny had shown that he was capable of something
worthier than dalliance, as his fathers had been before him.
He did not precisely blame himself for shortcomings in the past, since,
according to French ideas, he had not enough money on which to be
useful, while his social position precluded work. He could not serve his
country for fear of serving the republic, nor live on his estates,
because Bienville was too expensive to keep up. However well-meaning his
nature, there had been almost nothing open to him but the career of the
idle, handsome, high-born youth, with money enough to pay for the
luxuries of life, while his name secured credit for its necessities.
With his looks and his address it would have been easy to find a wife
who, by meeting his financial need, would have facilitated his path in
virtue; but on this point he was fastidious. Rather, perhaps, he was
typical of that modern, transitional phase of the French social mind
which, while still acknowledging the supremacy of the family in
matrimonial affairs, insists on some freedom of personal selection. That
his future wife should have enough money to make her a worthy chatelaine
of Bienville, as well as to meet the subsidiary expenses the position
implied, was a foregone conclusion; but it was equally a matter beyond
dispute that she should be some one whom he could love. He had not found
this combination of essentials until he met Marion Grimston, and the
hand he was thereupon prepared to offer her was not wholly empty of his
heart.
In her he saw for the first time in his life the intrepid maiden who
seems to dare a man to come and master her. That she should be the
daughter of Robert Grimston, with his commercial primness, and Mrs.
Grimston, with her pretentious snobbery, was a mystery he made no
attempt to solve. It was enough for him that this proud creature was in
the world, especially as her bearing toward him inspired the hope that
he might win her. It was a pity that he should have turned aside from
such high endeavor in a foolish dash to make himself the Hippomenes of
Diane Eveleth's Atalanta. Putting little heart into the latter contest,
he would have suffered little mortification from defeat, had it not been
that the high spirits of the pursued lady invited the world to come and
laugh with her at his expense.
Then it was that the Marquis de Bienville, in an uncontrollable access
of wounded vanity, had thrown his traditions of honor to the winds, and
lied. It was not such a lie as could be told--and forgotten; for there
were too many people eager to believe and repeat it. Within twenty-four
hours he found himself famous, all the way from the Parc Monceau to the
rue de Varennes. After his conscience had given him a sleepless night he
got up to see that any modification of his statement meant retraction.
Retraction was out of the question, in that it involved the loss of his
reputation among men. He was caught in a trap. He must lie and maintain
his place, or he must confess and go out of society. It must not be
supposed that he took his predicament lightly, or that he made his
choice without pangs of self-pity at the cruel necessity. It was his
honor, or hers! and if only the one or the other could be saved, it must
be his. So he saved it--according to his lights. He saved it by being
very bold in his statements by day, and heaping ignominy on himself
during the black hours of sleeplessness. He found, however, that the
process paid; for boldness engendered a sort of fictitious belief which
paralyzed the tendency to self-upbraiding until it ceased.
The special quality of his courage was shown on that gray dawn when he
stood up before George Eveleth in a corner of the Pré Catalan. He had
not the moral force to confess himself a perjurer in the sight of Paris,
but he could stand ready to take the bullets in his breast. In going to
the encounter he had no intention of doing otherwise. He would not atone
to an injured woman by setting her right in the eyes of men, but he
would make her the offering of his life.
It was a satisfaction now to know, as he was assured by letters, that
the incident was practically forgotten, and that Diane Eveleth had
disappeared. He himself found it easier than it used to be to dismiss
the subject from his mind; and if he recalled it at times, it was
generally--as it had been on shipboard--when at the end of his store of
confidential anecdotes. He was thinking, however, of dropping the story
from his repertoire, for he had more than remarked that its effect was
slightly sinister upon himself. He noticed, too, that, during the first
twenty-four hours on the steamer, Derek Pruyn avoided him, while he on
his part had felt a curious impulse to slink out of sight, which could
only be explained by the supposition that, as often happens on long
voyages, they had seen too much of each other.
Finding that he had let his cigarette go out, he threw it away, and
turned from the window to complete his toilet. As he did so his valet
entered with a card, stating that the gentleman who had sent it in was
waiting in the hail outside.
"Ask him to come in," he said, briefly, when he had read the name. He
was scarcely surprised, for Pruyn had spoken more than once of showing
him some civilities when they reached New York, and putting him up at
one or two convenient dubs.
"My dear sir," he cried, going forward with outstretched hand; but the
words died on his lips as Derek pushed his way in brusquely, without
greeting.
Again the young man attempted the ceremonious by apologizing for the
informality of his surroundings and the state of his dress; but again he
faltered before the haggard glare in Derek's eyes.
"I want to talk to you," Pruyn said, abruptly. Bienville made a gesture
of mingled politeness and astonishment.
"Certainly; but shall we not sit down while we do it? Will you smoke?
Here are cigarettes, but you probably prefer a cigar."
Educated in England, like many young Frenchmen of the upper classes,
Bienville spoke English fluently and with little accent.
"I want to talk to you," Derek said again. He took no notice of the
proffered seat, and they remained standing, as they were, with the round
table, bestrewn with letters, between them. "You remember," Derek
continued, speaking with difficulty--"you remember the story you told me
on the voyage--about a woman?"
Bienville nodded. He had a sudden presentiment of what was coming.
"I must tell you that on the night before I sailed for South America,
three months ago, I asked that woman to be my wife."
"In that case," Bienville said, promptly, and with a tranquillity he did
not feel, "I withdraw my statements."
"Withdrawal isn't enough. You must tell me they were not true."
Bienville remained silent for a minute. He was beginning to realize the
firmness of the ground he stood on. His instinct for self-preservation
was strong, and he had confidence in his dexterous use of the necessary
weapons.
"You must give me time to reflect on that," he said, after a pause.
"Why do you need time? If the thing isn't true, you've only got to say
so."
"It's not quite so easy as that. You can't cut every difficulty with a
sword, as they did the Gordian knot. One may go far in defence of a
woman's honor, but there are boundaries which even a gallant man cannot
pass; and, before I speak, I must see where they lie."
"I want the truth. I want no defence of a woman's honor--"
"Ah, but I do. That's the difference."
"Damn your difference! You didn't think much of a woman's honor when you
began your infernal tales."
"Did you, when you let me go on?"
"No. That's where I share your crime. That's all that keeps me from
striking you now."
"I let that pass. I know how you feel. I know just how hard it is for
you. I've been in something like your situation myself. No man can have
much to do with a woman without being put there in one way if not
another. It's because I do understand you that I share your pain--and
support your insults."
The tremor in his voice, coupled with the dignity of his bearing,
carried a certain degree of conviction, so that when Derek spoke again
it was less fiercely.
"Then I understand you to confirm what you told me on board ship?"
"On the contrary; you understand me to take it back. Why shouldn't that
be enough for you--without asking further questions?"
"Because I'm not here to go through formalities, but to seek for facts."
"Precisely; and yet, wouldn't it be wise, under the circumstances, not
to be too exacting? If I do my best for you--"
"It isn't a question of doing your best, but of telling me the truth."
"I can quite see that it might strike you in that way; but you'll pardon
me, I know, if I see it from another point of view. No man in my
situation would consider it a matter of telling you the truth, so much
as of coming to the aid of a lady whose good name he had unwittingly
imperilled. My supreme duty is there; and I'm willing to do it to the
utmost of my power. I am willing to withdraw everything I have ever
uttered that could tell against her. Can you ask me to do more?"
"Yes; I can ask you to deny it."
"Isn't that already a form of denial?"
"No; it's a form of affirmation."
"That's because you choose to take it so. It's because you prefer to go
behind my words, and ascribe to me motives which, for all you know, I do
not possess."
"I've nothing to do with your motives; my aim is to get at the truth."
"Since you have nothing to do with my motives," Bienville said, with a
slight lifting of the brows, "you'll permit me, I am sure, to be equally
indifferent to your aims. I tell you what I am prepared to do; but
what is it to me whether you are satisfied or not? I am sorry
to--to--inconvenience the lady; but as for you--!"
With a snap of the fingers he turned and strolled to the window, where
he stood, looking out, with his back toward his guest. It was
significant of their tension of feeling and concentration of mind that
both gesture and attitude went unnoted by both. Derek remained silent
and motionless, his slower mind trying to catch up with the Frenchman's
nimble adroitness. He had not yet done so when Bienville turned and
spoke again.
"Why should we quarrel? What should we gain by doing that? You and I are
two men of the world, to whom human nature is as an open book. What do
you expect me to do? What do you expect me to say? What more did you
think to call forth from me when you came here this morning? Do me
justice. Am I not going as far as a man can go when I say that I blot
out of my memory the cursed evenings you and I spent together in cursed
talk? That doesn't cover the ground, you think; but would any other form
of words cover it any better? Would you believe me the more, whatever
set of speeches I might adopt? Would you not always have in the back of
your mind your expressive English phrase, that I was lying like a
gentleman? You know best what you can do, as I know best what I can do;
but is it not true that we have arrived at a point where the less that
is spoken in words on either side, the better it will be for us all?"
When he had finished, Bienville turned again toward the window, leaning
his head wearily against the frame. Derek stood a minute longer watching
him. Then, as if accepting the assertion that there was nothing more
that could be said, he went quietly, with bent head, from the room.
* * * * *
He was down in the street before he became fully conscious that, among
the confused, strangled cries of pain within him, that which was loudest
and most imploring was a wailing self-reproach. It was a self-reproach
with a strain of pleading in it, akin to that with which a mother blames
herself for the failings of her son, seizing on any one else's wrong to
palliate the guilt of the accused. He had injured Diane himself! He had
pried into her past, and laid bare her sins, and stripped her life of
that covering of secrecy which no human existence could do without,
least of all his own.
He walked on with bowed head, his eyes blind to the May sunshine, his
ears deaf to the city's joyous, energetic uproar, his mind closed to the
fact that important business affairs were awaiting his attention. His
feet strayed toward Gramercy Park, directed not so much by volition as
by the primary man-instinct to be near some sweet, sympathetic woman in
the hour of pain. Lucilla and he had, grown up in one family as boy and
girl together, and there were moments when he found near her the peace
he could get nowhere else in the world.
He pushed by the footman who admitted him and walked straight to the
room where Lucilla was generally to be found. Though he could scarcely
be surprised to see Diane sitting by her, he stopped on the threshold,
with signs of embarrassment, and made as though he would withdraw.
Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of such a moment, Miss Lucilla
looked appealingly at Diane, who rose.
"Don't go, Mr. Pruyn," she said, forcing herself to show firmness. "You
arrive very opportunely. I have just asked my mother-in-law to come to
my aid in some of the things we discussed last night. Won't you do me
the justice to hear her?"
She crossed the room to where Mrs. Eveleth appeared on the threshold,
and, taking her by the hand, led her to the chair which Pruyn placed for
her.
"I'd better go, Diane dear," Miss Lucilla whispered, tremblingly.
"Please don't," Diane insisted. "I'd much rather have you stay. I've no
secrets from Miss Lucilla," she added, speaking to Derek. "I need a
woman friend; and I've found one."
"You couldn't find a better," Pruyn murmured, while Miss Lucilla slipped
her arm around Diane's waist, rather to steady herself than to support
her friend.
"Miss Lucilla knows everything that you know, petite mère," Diane
continued, turning to where her mother-in-law sat, slightly bowed, her
extended hand resting on her cane, like some graceful Sibyl. "She knows
everything that you know, and she knows one thing more. She knows what
some cruel people say was the way in which--George died."
Diane uttered the last two words in a kind of sob, and Mrs. Eveleth
looked up, startled.
"George--died?" she questioned, slowly, with a look of wonder.
Diane nodded, unable, for the minute, to speak.
"But we know how--he died."
"Mr. Pruyn tells me that we don't."
"I beg you not to put it in that way," Derek said, hurriedly. "I
repeated only what was told me, and what was afterward verified. Do you
not think we can spare Mrs. Eveleth what must be so painful?"
"There's no need to spare me, Mr. Pruyn. I think I've reached the point
to which old people often come--where they can't feel any more."
"Oh, mother, don't say that," Diane wailed, with a curiously childlike
cry. She had never before called Mrs. Eveleth mother, and the word
sounded strangely in this room which had not heard it since Miss Lucilla
was a little girl. "My mother would rather know," she declared, almost
proudly, speaking again to Pruyn, "than be kept in ignorance of
something in which she could help me so much."
"What is it?" Mrs. Eveleth asked, eagerly.
Then Diane told her. It had been stated, so she said, that George had
not fallen in her defence, but by his own hand--to escape her; and
there was no one in the world but his own mother to give this monstrous
calumny the lie. During the recital Mrs. Eveleth sat with clasped hands,
but with head sinking lower at each word. Once she murmured something
which only Miss Lucilla was near enough to hear:
"Then that's why they wouldn't let me look at him in his coffin."
"He did love me, didn't he?" Diane cried. "He was happy with me, wasn't
he, mother dear? He understood me, and upheld me, and defended me,
whatever I did. He didn't want to leave me. He knew I should never have
cared for the loss of the money--that we could have faced that
together. Tell them so, mother; tell them."
For the first time since he had known her Derek saw Diane forget her
reserve in eager pleading. She stepped forward from Miss Lucilla's
embrace, standing before Mrs. Eveleth with palms opened outward, in an
attitude of petition. The older woman did not raise her head nor speak.
"He was happy with me," Diane insisted. "I made him happy. I wasn't the
best wife he could have had, but he was satisfied with me as I was, in
spite of my imperfections. He was worried sometimes, especially
toward--toward the last; but he wasn't worried about me, was he, mother
dear?"
Still the mother did not speak nor raise her head. Diane took a step
nearer and began again.
"I didn't know we were living beyond our means. I didn't know what was
going on around me. I reproach myself for that. A wiser woman _would_
have known; but I was young, and foolish, and very, very happy. I didn't
know I was ruining George, though I'm ready to take all the
responsibility for it now. But he never blamed me, did he, mother?
never, by a word, never by a look. Oh, speak, and tell them!"
Her voice came out with a sharp note of anxiety, in which there was an
inflection almost of fear; but when she ceased there was silence.
"Petite mère," she cried, "aren't you going to say anything?"
The bowed head remained bowed; the only sign came from the trembling of
the extended hand, resting on the top of the stick.
"If you don't speak," Diane cried again, "they'll think it's because you
don't want to."
If there was a response to this, it was when the head bent lower.
"Mother," Diane cried, in alarm, "I've no one in the world to speak a
word for me but you. If you don't do it, they'll believe I drove George
to his death--they'll say I was such a woman that he killed himself
rather than live with me any longer."
Suddenly Mrs. Eveleth raised her head and looked round upon them all.
Then she staggered to her feet.
"Take me away!" she said, in a dead voice, to Lucilla van Tromp. "Help
me! Take me away! I can't bear any more!" Leaning on Miss Lucilla's arm,
she advanced a step and paused before Diane, who stood wide-eyed, and
awe-struck rather than amazed, at the magnitude of this desertion. "May
God forgive you, Diane," she said, quietly, passing on again. "I try to
do so; but it's hard."
While Derek's eyes were riveted on Diane, she stood staring vacantly at
the empty doorway through which Mrs. Eveleth and Miss Lucilla had passed
on their way up-stairs. This abandonment was so far outside the range of
what she had considered possible that there seemed to be no avenues to
her intelligence through which the conviction of it could be brought
home. She gazed as though her own vision were at fault, as though her
powers of comprehension had failed her.
[Illustration: DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG
"I'VE NO ONE TO SPEAK A WORD FOR ME BUT YOU"]
Derek, on his part, watched her, with the fascination with which we
watch a man performing some strange feat of skill--from whom first one
support, and then another, and then another, falls away, until he is
left with nothing to uphold him, perilously, frightfully alone.
When at length the knowledge of what had occurred came over her, Diane
looked round the familiar room, as though to bring her senses back out
of the realm of the incredible. When her eyes rested on him it was
simply to include him among the common facts of earth after this
excursion into the impossible. She said nothing, and her face was blank;
but the little gesture of the hands--the little limp French gesture: the
sudden lift, the sudden drop, the soft, tired sound, as the arms fell
against the sides--implied fatality, finality, inexplicability, and an
infinite weariness of created things.