It was, perhaps, the knowledge that Dorothea could play the game that
enabled Derek, during the rest of the summer, to play it himself. This
he did without flinching, finding strength in the fact that, as time
went on, Dorothea seemed to enter into his plans and submit to his
judgment. The first few weeks of pallor and silence having passed, she
resumed her accustomed ways, and, as far as he could tell, grew
cheerful. Always having credited her with common-sense, he was pleased
now to see her make use of it in a way of which few girls of nineteen
would have been capable. She accepted his surveillance with so much
docility that, by the time they returned to town in the autumn he was
able to congratulate himself on his success.
On her part, Dorothea carried out his instructions to the letter.
Notwithstanding the opening of the season and the renewal of the usual
gayeties, she lived quietly, accepting few invitations, and rarely going
into society at all, except under her father's wing. On those accidental
occasions when Carli Wappinger came within their range of vision, it was
only as a distant ship drifts into sight at sea--to drift silently away
again. If Dorothea perceived him, she gave no sign. It was clear to
Derek that her spurt of rebellion was over, and that her little
experience had done her no harm. The name of Wappinger being tacitly
ignored between them, he could only express his pleasure, in the results
he had achieved, by an extravagant increase of Dorothea's allowance, and
gifts of inappropriate jewels. It would have taken a more weatherwise
person than he to guess that behind this domestic calm the storm was
brewing.
The first intuition of threatening events came to Mrs. Wappinger.
"I've seen nothing and heard nothing," she declared, in her emphatic
way, to Diane, "but I know something is going on."
That was in September. They sat in the shade of the cool flag-paved
pergola at Waterwild, Mrs. Wappinger's place on Long Island. The
tea-table stood between them, and they lounged in wicker chairs. Framed
by marble pillars, and festooned from above by vines drooping from the
roof, there was a view of terraced lawns descending toward the sea.
Between the slightly overcrowded urns and statues there were bright
dashes of color, here of dahlias in full bloom, there of reddening
garlands of ampelopsis or Virginia creeper. It was what Mrs. Wappinger
called an "off-day," otherwise she could not have had Diane at
Waterwild. In her loyalty toward the deserted woman she seized those
opportunities when Carli was away, and she was certain of having no
other guests, "to have the poor thing down for the day, and give her a
good meal."
Not that people occupied themselves with Diane or her affairs! Her place
in the hurrying, scrambling social throng had been so unobtrusive that,
now that she no longer filled it, she was easily forgotten. Among the
few who paid her the tribute of recollection there was the generally
received impression that Derek Pruyn, having discovered her relations
with the Marquis de Bienville--relations which, so they said, had been
well known in Paris, in the days when she was still some one--had
dismissed her from her position in his household. That was natural
enough, and there was no further reason for remembering her. Having
disappeared into the limbo of the unfortunate, she was as far beyond the
mental range of those who retained their blessings as souls that have
passed are out of sight of men and women who still walk the earth. For
this very reason she called out in Mrs. Wappinger that motherly
good-nature which was only partially warped by the ambition for social
success. On more than one of her "off-days" she had lured Diane out of
her refuge in University Place, treating her with all the kindness she
could bestow without causing disparaging comment upon herself. On the
present occasion she was the more desirous of her company because of the
fact that, as she expressed it herself, she had "sniffed something going
on."
[Illustration: DRAWN BY FRANK CRAIG
IT WAS WHAT MRS. WAPPINGER CALLED AN "OFF DAY"]
"As I tell you," she repeated, "I've heard nothing, and seen nothing;
I've just sniffed it. If you were to ask me how, I couldn't explain it
to you any more than I can say how I get the scent of this climbing
heliotrope. But I do get it; and I do know something is in the wind,
more than what is told to you and I."
"One can only hope that it will be nothing foolish," Diane murmured,
guardedly.
"It _will_ be something foolish," Mrs. Wappinger declared, "and you may
take my word for it. Derek Pruyn can't arrogate to himself the powers of
the Lord above any more than we can. If he thinks he can stop young
blood from running he'll find out he's wrong."
It was the first mention of his name that Diane had heard in many weeks,
and at the sound her hand trembled in such a way that she was obliged to
put down untasted the cup she had half raised to her lips.
"He's not an unkind man," she found voice to say; "he's only a mistaken
one. He has one of those natures capable of dealing magnificently with
great affairs, but helpless in the trivial matters of every day. He's
like the people who see well at a distance, but become confused over the
objects right under their eyes."
"Then the farther you keep away from that man the better the view he'll
take of you. It's what I'd say to Carli if he'd ask for my advice."
"Does that mean," Diane ventured to inquire, "that you don't want him to
marry Dorothea?"
"I certainly do not. If there were no other reason, she's the sort of
girl to make me put one foot into the grave, whether I want to or no;
and it stands to reason that I don't want to be squelched one hour
before my time."
"Naturally; but I fancy you'd find her a sweeter girl than you might
suppose."
"So she may be, dear; but I've spent too much money on Carli to wish to
see him force his way into a family where he isn't wanted."
This was the text of Mrs. Wappinger's discourse, not only on the present
occasion, but on the subsequent "off-days," when Diane was induced to
visit Waterwild.
"Whatever is going on, Reggie Bradford's in it," she confided to Diane
some few weeks later.
"Is that the fat young man with the big laugh?"
"Yes; and one of the greatest catches in New York. Carli tells me he's
wild about Marion Grimston, and I can see for myself that Mrs. Bayford
is playing him against that Frenchman. She'll get the title if she can,
but if not, she'll fall back on the money."
"It's a pretty safe alternative," Diane smiled, making an effort to
speak without betraying her feelings.
"Reggie is a good-natured boy," Mrs. Wappinger pursued, "but a regular
water-pipe. If you want to get anything out of him you've only got to
turn the faucet. It's just as well that he is; because whatever Carli is
up to Reggie knows, and what Reggie knows Marion Grimston knows. If ever
you see her--"
"Oh, but I don't--not now."
"That's a pity. If you did, you could pump her."
"I'm afraid I'm not much good at that sort of thing."
"Well, I am, when I get a chance. I'm bound to find out, somehow; and
there are more ways of killing a cat than by giving it poison."
A few weeks later still Mrs. Wappinger informed Diane that Dorothea
Pruyn was not happy.
"The Thoroughgoods told the Louds," she explained, "and the Louds told
me. Her father thinks she has given in to him; but she hasn't--not an
inch. He keeps her like a jailer; and she acts like a convict--always
with an eye open for some way of escape. That man no more understands
women than he does making pie."
"I've always noticed that the really strong men rarely do. There's
almost invariably something petty about a man to whom a woman isn't a
puzzle and a mystery."
"If it comes to a puzzle and a mystery, I don't know where you'd find a
greater one than Derek Pruyn himself. After the way he's acted--and
treated people--"
Diane flushed, but kept her emotions sufficiently under control to be
able to follow her usual plan of straightforward speaking.
"If you mean me, Mrs. Wappinger, I ought to say that Mr. Pruyn has done
nothing for which I can blame him. He was placed in a situation with
which only a very subtle intelligence could have dealt, and I respect
him the more for not having had it. It's generally the man who is most
competent in his own domain who is most likely to blunder when he gets
into the woman's; and I, for one, would rather have him do it. I've had
to suffer because of it, and so has Dorothea; and yet that doesn't make
me like it less."
"No, I dare say not," Mrs. Wappinger responded, sympathetically. "Mr.
Wappinger himself was just such a man as that. He'd put through a deal
that would make Wall Street shiver; but he understood my woman's nature
just about as much as old Tiger there, wagging his tail on the grass,
follows the styles in bonnets. Only, I'll tell you what, Mrs. Eveleth:
it's for men like that that God created sensible, capable wives, like
you and me; and they ought to have 'em."
This theme admitting of little discussion, Diane did not pursue it, but
she went away from Waterwild with a deepened sense of Derek's need of
her, as well as of Dorothea's. She could so easily have helped them both
that the enforced impotence was a new element in her pain. To walk the
town in search of work to which she was little suited, when that which
no one but herself could accomplish had to remain undone, became, during
the next few weeks, the most intolerable part of the irony of
circumstance. The wifely, the maternal qualities of her being, of which
she had never been strongly conscious till of late, awoke in response to
the need that drew them forth, only to be blighted by denial.
The inactivity was the harder to endure because of the fact that, as
autumn passed into early winter, there came a period when all her little
world seemed to have dropped her out of sight. There were no more
"off-days" at Waterwild, and Miss Lucilla's occasional letters from
Newport ceased. Between her mother-in-law and herself, after a few painful
attempts at intercourse, there had fallen an equally painful silence.
Even her two or three pupils fell away.
From the papers she learned that one or another of those for whom she
cared was back in town again. She walked in the chief thoroughfares in
the hope of meeting some of them, but chance refused to favor her. In
the dusk of the early descending November and December twilights she
passed their houses, watching the warm glow of the lights within,
against which, now and then, a shadow that she could almost recognize
would pass by. She could have entered at Miss Lucilla's door, or Mrs.
Wappinger's; but a strange shyness, the shyness of the unfortunate, had
taken hold of her, and she held back. In the mean time she was free to
watch, with sad eyes and sadder spirit, the great city, reversing the
processes of nature, awaken from the torpor of the genial months into
its winter life.
No one knew better than herself that thrill of excited energy with which
those born with the city instinct return from the acquired taste for
mountain, seaside, and farm, to enter once more the maze of purely human
relationships. It was a moment with which her own active nature was in
sympathy. She liked to see the blinds being raised in the houses and the
barricading doors taken down. She liked to see the vehicles begin to
crowd one another in the streets and the pedestrians on the pavement
wear a brisker air. She liked to see the shop-windows brighten with
color and the great public gathering-spots let in and let out their
throngs. She responded to the quickened animation with the spontaneity
of one all ready to take her part, till the thought came that a part had
been refused her. It was with a curious sensation of being outside the
range of human activities that, during those days of timid, futile
looking for employment, she roamed the busy thoroughfares of New York.
As time passed she ceased to think much about her need of sympathetic
fellowship in her anxiety to get work. She wrote advertisements and
answered them; she applied at schools, and offices, and shops; she came
down to seeking any humble drudgery which would give her the chance to
live.
It was not till one day in early December that the last flicker of her
hope went out. Chance had made her pass at midday along the pavement
opposite one of the great restaurants. Lifting her eyes instinctively
toward the group of well-dressed people on the steps, she saw that Mrs.
Bayford and Marion Grimston were going in, accompanied by Reggie
Bradford and the Marquis de Bienville. She had heard little or nothing
of them during the last four empty months; but it was plain now that the
lovers were agreed and her own cause abandoned. Up to this moment she
had not realized how tenaciously she had clung to the belief that the
proud, high-souled girl would yet see justice done her; and now she had
deserted her, like the rest!
For the first time during her years of struggle she felt absolutely
beaten--beaten so thoroughly that it would be useless to renew the
fight. She had been on her way to see a lady who had advertised for a
nursery governess; but she had no strength left with which to face the
interview. In the winter-garden of the restaurant Mrs. Bayford was
purring to her guests, Reggie Bradford was whispering to Miss Grimston,
and the Marquis de Bienville was ordering the wines, while Diane was
wandering blindly back to the poor little room she called her home,
there to lie down and allow her heart to break.
But hearts do not break at the command of those who own them, and when
she had moaned away the worst of her pain, she fell asleep. When she
awoke it was already growing dark, and the knocking at her door, which
roused her, was like a call from the peace of dreams to the desolation
of reality. When she had turned on the light she received from the hands
of the waiting servant that which had become a most rare visitant in the
blankness of her life--a note.
The address was in a sprawling hand, which she recognized. What was
written within was more sprawling still:
"For Heaven's sake, come to me at once. The expected has happened, and
I don't know what to do. The motor will wait and bring you.