As the pivot of events, Miss Lucilla van Tromp was beginning to feel the
responsibilities of her position. Only a woman with an inexhaustible
heart could have met as she did the demands for sympathy, of various
shades, made by the chief participants in the drama; while there was one
phase of the action which called for a heroic display of conscience.
It was impossible now to contemplate Marion Grimston's peril without a
grave sense of the duties imposed by friendship. Some people might stand
by and see a girl wreck her happiness by giving her heart to an unworthy
suitor, but Miss van Tromp was not among that number. It was, in fact,
one of those junctures at which all her good instincts prompted her to
say, "I ought to go and tell her." As a patriotic spinster, she held
decided views on the question of marriage between American heiresses and
impecunious foreign noblemen--and, in her eyes, all foreign noblemen
were impecunious--in any case; but to see Marion Grimston become the
victim of her parents' vulgar ambition gave to the subject a personal
bearing which made her duty urgent. If ever there was a moment when a
goddess in a machine could feel justified in descending, for active
intervention, it was now. She had the less hesitation in doing so, owing
to the fact that she had known Marion since her cradle; and between the
two there had always existed the subtle tie which not seldom binds the
widely diverse but essentially like-minded together. Accordingly, on a
bright May morning, within a few days of the last meeting between Derek
Pruyn and Diane Eveleth, she sallied forth to the fashionable quarter
where Mrs. Bayford dwelt, coming home, some two hours later, with a
considerably extended knowledge of the possibilities inherent in human
nature.
The tale Miss Lucilla told was that which had already been many times
repeated, each narrator lending to it the color imparted by his own
views of life. As now set forth, it became the story of a girl sought in
marriage by a man who has inflicted mortal wrong upon an innocent young
woman. With unconscious art Miss Lucilla placed Marion Grimston herself
in the centre of the piece, making the subsidiary characters revolve
around her. This situation brought with it a double duty: the one
explicit in righting the oppressed, the other implicit--for Miss Lucilla
balked at putting it too plainly into words--in punishing a wicked
marquis.
The girl sat with head slightly bowed and rich color deepening. If she
showed emotion at all, it was in her haughty stillness, as though she
voluntarily put all expression out of her face until the recital was
ended. The effect on Miss Lucilla, as they sat side by side on a sofa,
was slightly disconcerting, so that she came to her conclusion lamely.
"Of course, my dear, I don't know his side of the story, or what he may
have to say in self-defence. I'm only telling you what I've heard, and
just as I heard it."
"I dare say it's quite right."
The brevity and suggested cynicism of this reply produced in Miss
Lucilla a little shock.
"Oh! Then, you think--?"
"There would be nothing surprising in it. It's the sort of thing that's
always happening in Paris. It's one of the peculiarities of that society
that you can never believe half the evil you hear of any one--not even
if it's told you by the man himself. I might go so far as to say that,
when it's told you by himself you're least of all inclined to credit
it."
"But how dreadful!"
"Things are dreadful or not, according to the degree in which you're
used to them. I've grown up in that atmosphere, and so I can endure it.
In fact, any other atmosphere seems to me to lack some of the necessary
ingredients of air; just as to some people--to Napoleon, for instance--a
woman who isn't rouged isn't wholly dressed."
"I know that's only your way of talking, dear. Oh, you can't shock
_me_."
"At any rate, the way of talking shows you what I mean. I can quite
understand how Monsieur de Bienville might have said that of Mrs.
Eveleth."
Lucilla's look of pain induced Miss Grimston promptly to qualify her
statement.
"I said I could understand it; I didn't say I respected it. It's only
what's been said of hundreds of thousands of women in Paris by hundreds
of thousands of men, and in the place where they've said it it's taken
with the traditional grain of salt. If all had gone as it was going at
the time--if the Eveleths hadn't lost their money--if Mr. Eveleth hadn't
shot himself--if Mrs. Eveleth had kept her place in French society--the
story wouldn't have done her any harm. People would have shrugged their
shoulders at it, and forgotten it. It's the transferring of the scene
here, among you, that makes it grave. All your ideas are so different
that what's bad becomes worse, by being carried out of its milieu.
Monsieur de Bienville must be made to understand that, and repair the
wrong."
"You seem to think there's no question but that--there _is_ a wrong?"
"Oh, I suppose there isn't. There are so many cases of the kind. Mrs.
Eveleth is probably neither more nor less than one of the many
Frenchwomen of her rank in life who like to skate out on the thin edge
of excitement without any intention of going through. There are always
women like my aunt Bayford to think the worst of people of that sort,
and to say it."
"And yet I don't see how that justifies Monsieur de Bienville."
"It doesn't justify; it only explains. Responsibility presses less
heavily on the individual when it's shared."
"But wouldn't the person--you'll forgive me, dear, won't you, if I'm
going too far?--wouldn't the person who has to take his part in that
kind of responsibility be a doubtful keeper of one's happiness?"
Miss Grimston, half lowering her eyes, looked at her visitor with
slumberous suspension of expression, and made no reply.
"If a man isn't good--" Miss Lucilla began again, tremblingly.
"No man is perfect."
"True, dear; and yet are there not certain qualities which we ought to
consider as essentials--?"
"Monsieur de Bienville has those qualities for me."
"But surely, dear, you can't mean--?"
"Yes, I do mean."
The avowal was made quietly, with the still bearing of one who gives a
few drops of confession out of deep oceans of reserve. Miss Lucilla
gazed at her in astonishment. That her parents should sacrifice her was
not surprising; but that she should be willing to sacrifice herself went
beyond the limits of thought. The revelation that Marion could actually
love the man was so startling that it shocked her out of her timidity,
loosening the strings of her eloquence and unsealing the sources of her
maternal tenderness. There was nothing original in Miss Lucilla's
subsequent line of argument. It was the old, oft-uttered, futile appeal
to the head, when the heart has already spoken. It premised the
possibility of placing one's affections where one cannot give one's
respect, regardless of the fact that the thing is done a thousand times
a day. It reasoned, it predicted, it implored, with an effect no more
disintegrating on the girl's decision than moonbeams make upon a
mountain. Through it all, she sat and listened with the veiled eyes and
mysterious impassivity which gave to her personality a curiously
incalculable quality, as of a force presenting none of the ordinary
phenomena by which to measure or compute it.
It was not till Miss Lucilla touched on the subject of honor that she
obtained any sign of the effect she was producing. It was no more, on
Marion's part, than an uneasy movement, but it betrayed its cause. Miss
Lucilla pressed her point with renewed insistence, and presently two big
tears hung on the long, black lashes and rolled down.
"I should like to see Mrs. Eveleth."
Like the hasty raising and dropping of a curtain on some jealously
guarded view, the words gave to Miss Lucilla but a fleeting glimpse of
what was passing in the obscure recesses of the girl's heart; but she
determined to make the most of it by fixing, there and then, the day and
hour when, without apparently forcing the event, the two might come face
to face on the neutral ground of Gramercy Park.
It was a meeting that, when it took place, would have been attended with
embarrassment had not both young women been practised in the ways of
their little world. Progress in mutual understanding was made the easier
by the existence, on both sides, of the European view of life, with its
fusion of interests, its softness of outline, its give and take of
toleration, in contradistinction to the sharp, clear, insistent American
demands for a certain line of conduct and no other. Five minutes had not
gone by in talk before each found in the other's presence that sense of
repose which comes from similar habits of thought and a common native
idiom. Whatever grounds for difference they might find, they were, at
least, ranged on the same side in that battle which the two hemispheres
half unconsciously wage upon each other as to the main purposes of life.
Thus they were able to approach their subject without that first
preliminary shock which makes it difficult for races to agree; and thus,
too, Marion Grimston found herself, before she was aware of it, pouring
out to Diane Eveleth that heart which, in response to Miss Lucilla's
tender pleading, had been dumb.
They sat in the big, sombre library where, only a few days before, Diane
had seen Derek Pruyn turn his back on her, without even a gesture of
farewell. On the long mahogany table the red azalea was in almost
passionate luxuriance of blossom; while through the open window faint
odors of lilac came from Miss Lucilla's bit of garden.
"I don't want you to think him worse than you're obliged to," Marion
said, as though in defence of the stand her heart had taken. "I've been
told that very few men possess the two kinds of courage--the moral and
the physical. Savonarola had the one and Nelson had the other; but
neither of them had both. And of the two, for me, the physical is the
essential. I can't help it. If I had to choose between a soldier and a
saint, I'd take the soldier. When the worst is said of Monsieur de
Bienville, it must be admitted that he's brave."
"I've always understood that he was a good rider and a good shot," Diane
admitted. "I've no doubt that in battle he would conduct himself like a
hero."
The girl's head went up proudly, and from the languorous eyes there came
one splendid flash before the lids fell over them again.
"I know he would; and when a man has that sort of courage he's worth
saving."
"You admit, then, that he needs to be--saved?" Again the heavy lids were
lifted for one brief, search-light glance.
"Yes; I admit that. I believe he has wronged you. I can't tell you how I
know it; but I do. It's to tell you so that I've asked you to come here.
I hoped to make you see, as I do, that he's capable of doing it without
appreciating the nature of his crime. If we could get him to see that--"
"Then--what?"
"He'd make you reparation."
"Are you so sure?"
"I'm very sure. If he didn't--" The consequences of that possibility
being difficult of expression, she hung upon her words.
"I should be sorry to have you brought to so momentous a decision on my
account."
"It wouldn't be on your account; it would be on my own. I understand
myself well enough to see that I could love a dishonorable man; but I
couldn't marry him."
"You have, of course, your own idea as to what makes a man
dishonorable."
"What makes a man dishonorable is to persist in dishonor after he has
become aware of it. Any one may speak thoughtlessly, or boastfully, or
foolishly, and be forgiven for it. But he can't be forgiven if he keeps
it up, especially when by his doing so a woman has to suffer."
The movement with which Diane pushed back her chair and rose betrayed a
troubled rather than an impatient spirit.
"Miss Grimston," she said, standing before the girl and looking down
upon her, "I should almost prefer not to have you take my affairs into
your consideration. I doubt if they're worth it. I can't deny that I
shrink from becoming a factor in your life, as well as from feeling that
you must make your decisions, or unmake them, with reference to me."
"I'm not making my decisions, or unmaking them, with reference to you;
it's with reference to Monsieur de Bienville. He has my father's consent
to his asking me to be his wife. I understand that, according to the
formal French fashion, he's going to do it to-morrow. Before I give him
an answer I must know that he is such a man as I could marry."
"You would have thought him so if you hadn't heard this about me."
"Even so, it's better for me to have heard it. Any prudent person would
tell you that. What I'm going to ask you to do now will not be for your
sake; it will be for mine."
"You're going to ask me to do something?"
"Yes; to see Monsieur de Bienville."
Diane recoiled with an expression of dismay.
"I know it will be hard for you," Miss Grimston pursued, "and I wouldn't
ask you to do it if it were not the straightest way out of a perplexing
situation. I've confidence enough in him to believe that when he has
seen you and heard your story, he'll act according to the dictates of a
nature which I know to be essentially honorable, even if it's weak. You
can see what that will mean to us all. It will not only clear you and
rehabilitate him, but it will bring happiness to me."
There was something in the way in which these brief statements were made
that gave them the nature of an appeal. The very difficulty of the
reserved heart in speaking out, the shame-flushed cheek--the subdued
voice--the halting breath--had on Diane a more potent effect than
eloquence. What was left of her own hope, too, at once put forth its
claim at the possibility of getting justice. It was a matter of taking
her courage in both hands, in one tremendous effort, but the fact that
this girl believed in her was a stimulus to making the attempt. Before
they parted--with stammering expressions of mutual sympathy--she had
given her word to do it.